Stop four of Secretary Kerry’s Europe trip landed him in Rome and culminated with an announcement of $60 million in non-lethal assistance to strengthen the organizational capacity of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC). With this announcement, the United States is now providing more than $115 million in non-lethal support for the civilian opposition. As liberated areas across Syria struggle to rebuild their communities without the support of the central government, this additional assistance will enable the SOC to help enhance the capacity of local councils and communities so they can expand the delivery of basic goods and essential services, fulfill administrative functions, and extend the rule of law.

Secretary of State John Kerry, with the Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi and Syrian Opposition Council Chairman Moaz al-Khati, announces non-lethal assistance to Syrians. Photo credit: State Department

Significantly, the Secretary also announced that the United States would extend the provision of food rations and medical kits to the opposition, including the Supreme Military Council, in order to feed those in need and to tend to the sick and wounded.

In Secretary Kerry’s words: “We do this because we need to stand on the side of those in this fight who want to see Syria rise again in unity and see a democracy and human rights and justice.”

Standing in solidarity side-by-side with the Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi and Syrian Opposition Council Chairman Moaz al-Khatib, Secretary Kerry noted that the international community stands with a united voice in its commitment to helping the Syrian people achieve their goals.

“The United States and all the countries represented here believe the Syrian Opposition Coalition can successfully lead the way to a peaceful transition, but they cannot do it alone. They need more support from all of us, and they need Bashar al-Assad to make a different set of decisions.”

While in Italy, Secretary Kerry attended a dinner with EU and NATO member foreign ministers and met with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius. He had the opportunity to meet with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and other government ministers and attend an event commemorating the 2013 Italian Year of Culture with Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi.

In a statement, Secretary Kerry also thanked Pope Benedict, who left the Holy See on February 28, for his leadership. He shared good wishes to the Pope on behalf of the American people.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme is “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women”. In observance, this week USAID is profiling brave individuals and dynamic programs focused on addressing gender-based violence around the world.

Did you know that a woman or girl who has been raped has just 72 hours to access medical care in order to prevent HIV infection? The hours and days following rape are critical for women and men, and boys and girls to treat injuries related to the assault, prevent infection, and receive the basic emotional support that will allow them to recover and resume a full life. Now imagine the challenges that a rape survivor may face in accessing those basic services and support in situations where sexual violence is a daily risk, and where services and assistance are limited—or located miles away—as is the case in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo or South Sudan.

Ethiopia, October 2010. Photo credit: Jane Strachan, USAID

These challenges are real, and USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance is committed to finding solutions to address gender-based violence (GBV) as a part of our humanitarian response to disasters. GBV, including rape, occurs in every country around the world, and we know that it increases in disasters and conflicts. In order to better respond, we’ve developed and are supporting new strategies to equip ourselves and our partners with the training and expertise to, not only quickly provide services for survivors, but also to help prevent violence in the first place.

This is one of the reasons why USAID has supported the work of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Over the past several years, IRC has helped raise the bar for GBV emergency response and preparedness by implementing pilot programs in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. USAID provided support for these programs to build on what we’ve learned about GBV and further strengthen our capacities to assist those in need.

The pilot programs in Haiti and DRC demonstrated that, through training and prepositioning materials, community workers and other humanitarian responders could quickly mobilize medical services and emotional support for GBV survivors. We saw the strongest evidence of the program’s success in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where despite an increased need, IRC found that staff and local partners were able to provide services to more GBV survivors thanks to these preparedness measures.

USAID is dedicated to moving forward with the wider humanitarian community to develop and implement a solid response in preventing sexual violence in emergencies, and fully responding to the needs of those affected by GBV. GBV is a significant problem around the world, but USAID is striving to ensure that women and girls are protected, and that the needs of survivors are met, in every disaster where we provide assistance.

What if you could take a fraction of a penny and use it to help build a health system? Believe it. It takes only a fraction of a single penny per American taxpayer dollar to train a global health workforce—a workforce that will reach millions through treatment, prevention and counseling services.

Just ask midwife Teddy Tiberimbwaku, who had the opportunity to meet Uganda’s vice president Thursday.

Last year, Uganda’s Ministry of Health, operating with only one doctor and 13 nurses to serve every 10,000 people, was told by the Ministry of Public Service that not only could it not create any new positions, but also any unfilled positions—some 42 percent of them—would be lost.

Yet Thursday, Ugandan Vice President Edward Ssekandi, on behalf of President Yoweri Museveni, celebrated and honored the work of Teddy and other health workers at the “Celebrating Health Workers in Uganda” event. Other awardees honored for their inspiring work included Prof. Francis Omaswa, Dr. Yasur Mubarak and Dennis Tabula.

In addition to highlighting the contributions of individual health workers who have worked tirelessly to save the lives of their country’s most vulnerable and strengthen the overall health system, the event marked a new $19.8 million investment by the Ugandan government to fill critical health workforce positions throughout the country—a true show of in-country leadership and ownership. Just how the Ugandan Parliament approved such a significant amount of money from its limited budget exemplifies why the United States invests in global health.

Furthering the bipartisan legacy of American leadership in global health has helped slash child mortality around the world by 70 percent over the last 50 years, end smallpox, and put polio on the brink of eradication, President Obama and members of Congress from both parties have laid out a bold, yet achievable, vision to put an end to preventable child and maternal deaths, and create an AIDS-free generation.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and its non-profit partners, like IntraHealth International, recognize that a major barrier to realizing this vision is a severe lack of trained and supported health workers, especially those on the frontlines of care. The World Health Organization estimates that 1 billion people have little or no access to essential health services, and that at least 1 million more frontline health workers are needed to deliver these services in developing countries. Global supply of antiretroviral drugs or vaccines cannot suffice without the health workers to deliver them to those in need – they are the backbone of any health system.

Such a crisis cannot be solved by the United States alone. We must work closely with our developing country partners to help them develop sustainable solutions that work in their own local context. This is why we are truly heartened by the commitment of the Government of Uganda to solving its health workforce crisis.

IntraHealth’s Uganda Capacity Program, supported by USAID, works with the Ugandan Ministry of Health on health worker staff audits for three years. The program keeps tabs on how many health workers are employed throughout the country, where they are, how many positions are vacant, and other key data that many developing country governments lack.

So when the Uganda’s planning ministry proposed the hiring freeze for the health sector, Uganda’s Ministry of Health and supporters of health workers across the country literally had the data at their fingertips to illustrate just how disastrous the freeze would be to the country, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates globally, and the tenth highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the world, according to UNAIDS.

Ugandans pushed their agenda forward using the power of evidence, which led to a budget passed in September 2012 that set aside almost $20 million to increase financial incentives for doctors who serve rural areas and created more than 6,000 jobs for new health workers who will improve the health and wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans.

Professor Francis Omaswa, Pauline Muhuhu Award. Photo credit: USAID

The Ministry of Health and the Uganda Capacity Program are now working on a sustainable, data-driven allocation plan for these in-country investments in health workers. Meanwhile, USAID and IntraHealth are working together through mechanisms such as the Frontline Health Workers Coalition to amplify our collective belief that trained and supported health workers are crucial to giving millions access to health care, and in turn, creating a healthier, safer, and more prosperous world.

Dr. Ariel Pablos-Méndez is Assistant Administrator for Global Health at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Pape A. Gaye is President and CEO of IntraHealth International.

The Press Trust of India reports on USAID’s announcement that Administrator Rajiv Shah, the “highest ranking Indian-American in the Obama Administration,” will travel to India and Myanmar in March. Shah is expected to “announce a major program to reduce preventable child deaths” in Mumbai.

The Christian Science Monitor reports on the U.S. policy of not branding aid parcels aims to ensure they reach Syrians. USAID’s Nancy Lindborg said, “We are not putting flags on the aid so that it’s perhaps not as visible as it is in other situations. Our priority is to ensure that it reaches people and that it doesn’t create additional insecurity.”

The Wall Street Journal quoted Administrator Shah, saying “India is the most important country in the world when it comes to saving children’s lives and if they can achieve success and we can support it, the world will be well on its way to achieving an extraordinary and historic result of ensuring that every single child around the world lives to see their fifth birthday.”

The Times Of Central Asia reports that USAID has joined the fight against tuberculosis (TB) in Kyrgyzstan. USAID representative Carey Gordon stated, “Over the past decades, tuberculosis remains one of the relevant issues for Kyrgyzstan’s healthcare for many reasons, including socio-economic issues, and because of poorly established TB detection and treatment in the country.” In Jordan, the Women and Children’s Hospital in Mafraq is now double its size a year ago after a USAID renovation. It serves both Jordanians and Syrian refugees, and the hospital is one of 14 USAID renovated in the past three years throughout the country according to Zawya.

Despite nearly two years of ongoing conflict in Syria, grain is being ground into flour, tested for moisture and protein content, and baked into sample loaves of bread. Flour that meets approval is bagged and loaded onto trucks bound for a distribution warehouse in Aleppo Governorate.

At the warehouse, each bag is accounted for as it is offloaded by workers. A community member, who helps oversee the warehouse, looks on, notepad in hand. He talks about how the flour can help ease the financial burden of the displaced Syrians who crowd almost all available living space in the neighborhood.

He notes that even subsidized flour costs more than most families can afford even in the best of times. The flour being offloaded today is donated by USAID and will allow bakeries—identified in coordination with the Syrian Opposition Coalition’s Assistance Coordination Unit—to sell bread at reduced cost, while still making enough profit to pay workers and purchase additional supplies in local markets.

The warehouse manager also speaks of the overall economic benefit of the donated flour to businesses in the area. “It’s not our objective to just give relief,” he says, “We want to help the people work and make their own money.”

The unloading of the flour concludes in the late afternoon. The delivery truck buttons up and heads away, while the workers hurry off to receive their day’s wages. The gate to the distribution warehouse closes, but it will open again soon enough.

Another truck filled with USAID-donated flour will arrive tomorrow, and the whole process will be played out again. USAID is providing enough flour to 50 bakeries in Aleppo Governorate to bake daily bread for approximately 210,000 people for the next five months.

The United States is providing nearly $385 million in humanitarian aid to help those affected by the crisis in Syria.

This week, we’re celebrating our partner agency the Peace Corpsduring its annual Peace Corps Week. Today marks the anniversary of when John F. Kennedy signed the executive order to establish the Peace Corps. The following is a guest blog post by Jean Harman of the Peace Corps, highlighting Peace Corps volunteers’ contributions to Feed the Future’s goal to reduce global hunger, poverty and undernutrition.

Ever since John F. Kennedy and Sargent Shriver created the Peace Corps in 1962, it had been my dream to be a volunteer. But by the 1980s, having finally completed myundergraduate degree at 29, I thought I was too old. Turns out, I wasn’t too old for two years of volunteer service and I began my Peace Corps experience as an agriculture volunteer, helping villagers in Zaire (what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), raise sheep, goats, rabbits, and other small animals.

Peace Corps launched my career in food security. When I returned to the States, I went to graduate school and began a 25-year career as a resource and agricultural economist. Over the course of these years, I learned how many different facets there are to sustainable food security; a variety of issues help create or foster food security in households and communities. I’ve worked in trade, agriculture, natural resource management, and development, to name a few.

A Peace Corps volunteer trains his local community in Malawi on the nutritional benefits of growing soy. Photo credit: Peace Corps

Volunteers are never called ex-volunteers, but rather returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs). And we’re a diverse lot, with more than 200,000 RPCVs today. We often hear about RPCVs of note—a former Cabinet member, the president of a university, members of Congress—but there are a lot of extraordinary ordinary volunteers as well.

Take for instance, Elaine Bellezza, who served as a Peace Corps teacher in Cameroon. She ended up helping her community develop an artisanal cooperative, which made bowls, bags, tools and other items out of leather, gourds and other local agricultural products. Through this cooperative, women in the community went from earning about $2 a month to between $60 and $100. Yes, this is food security! Increased income means more money to spend on quality foods. And women’s income is more likely to be spent on food and children’s goods, so increased women’s income can significantly impact food security and improve nutrition.

Elaine returned to the United States in the mid-1990s but was soon overseas again, this time working in Mali. She eventually opened a high-end boutique of household articles and furniture. As a part of the private sector, Elaine worked with a range of women’s cooperatives in Mali. She developed a staff capable of taking over the business for her and running it as a cooperative-owned, woman-led business in Mali—even to this day!

Elaine never left Africa or economic development for long. She now works as a consultant in a variety of countries. An extraordinary ordinary volunteer.

There’s also Gordon Hentze, who served as a “fish” volunteer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was my mentor when I started my Peace Corps assignment, even as his own service was drawing to an end. We quickly discovered when I arrived at my village that we had both attended the same college and lived close to each other in Oregon. Gordon worked with farmers to build fish ponds for raising fish to eat at home and sell for income. Another facet of food security: sufficient food to eat at home and income to purchase additional foods, pay school fees, or buy medicine when it’s needed.

Gordon returned to Oregon after the Peace Corps. He owns a family farm in Junction City where he grows fruit, vegetables and nuts. He also caters to people who want to process their own fresh food: He developed small-scale processing equipment so a family can process its own fruits, vegetables and nuts in household-sized quantities. Innovation—a skill Gordon developed as a volunteer and now uses to foster food security through his business as a farmer in the private sector. Another extraordinary ordinary volunteer.

While many Peace Corps volunteers are extraordinary ordinary people, the same could be said of their service. Helping start a local cooperative. Training business owners. Teaching people to fish. These tasks are ordinary when taken at face value. But when you see each as a contributor to global food security, they take on an extraordinary quality. A local cooperative in a developing country that raises incomes of women so they can invest more in their children and families, sending both their sons and daughters to school. A business owner whose business sells nutritious foods and supplements in a community that sorely needed jobs and access to these items. A family that improves its diet with fish and is able to sell extra fish on the local market, sharing the nutritious value of the fish with the community and making extra money to invest in the family business, children’s education, and healthcare for all family members.

All this is happening thanks to the extraordinary ordinary work of Peace Corps volunteers at the grassroots level of agriculture and economic development. Seemingly ordinary tasks, carried out by individuals in partnership with developing communities, that are helping lift communities out of chronic hunger and poverty and into sustainable food security.

Peace Corps volunteers have been working on food security issues in their host countries for decades. Recently, Peace Corps teamed up with the U.S. Agency for International Development to work on food security issues under Feed the Future. In name, this designates the volunteers as Feed the Future Peace Corps Volunteers. In action, it provides better coordination between USAID and Peace Corps’ agriculture and economic development efforts and enables Feed the Future to benefit from one of Peace Corps’ major competitive advantages: grassroots development activities that support global food security.

In this next installment of the USAID Pounds of Prevention series (PDF), we travel to Guatemala. Many people in Guatemala live in areas prone to natural hazards. Earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, floods, and landslides have all challenged the population and spurred the country to take action to prepare for and lessen the effects of disasters. Photo by USAID.

Working in 85 communities in 10 target municipalities across Georgia, the USAID/New Economic Opportunities (NEO) initiative enables highly vulnerable individuals to be self-sufficient through vocational training.

“Amazing, but I have to put some of my villagers on the waiting list,” smiles Shalva Grigalashvili, plumber and tile-setter from Kvishkheti community in Khashuri municipality. “More and more people in Kvishkheti feel a need to put appropriate tourism infrastructure in place and start to upgrade their houses to attract more visitors,’” explains Shalva. As a popular tourist destination in Georgia, the income of the Kvishkheti population significantly depends on the tourism revenues accrued each summer.

The twenty-two year old Shalva Grigalashvili was one of 20 students who graduated from the USAID-sponsored plumbing/tile-setting vocational training program at the Khidistavi Orienti Vocational College in Gori in September 2012. Along with other top students in his program, the USAID/New Economic Opportunities Initiative (NEO) awarded plumbing and tile-setting toolkits to encourage graduates like Shalva to start their own businesses and support income generation opportunities.

Shalva Grigalashvili, one of USAID/NEO beneficiaries, tiling a guesthouse bathroom in Kvishkheti village of Khashuri municipality. Photo credit: USAID/NEO

Unlike many of his friends and neighbors who travel to work in Tbilisi, Shalva decided to stay in his own village and help other residents improve their living conditions. After completing his training, Shalva started to renovate his neighbors’ houses in Bulbulistsikhe village in Kvishkheti community. Shalva also decided to help a less successful classmate who because of poor performance did not receive a plumber’s toolkit. Through their joint efforts, Shalva gave his friend the opportunity to build upon his training and better master their profession, gain employment and increase his income. “Hard work,” Shalva admits, “but well worth the effort. It is so rewarding to have such a highly demanded profession that brings you money and respect.”

Shalva is just one of the 254 vulnerable individuals from NEO target communities in the Shida Kartli, Mtskheta-Mtianeti, Racha-Lechkhumi, and Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti regions of Georgia that benefited from USAID-funded vocational training programs. Within three month of graduation, 168 graduates (66 percent) had already obtained new jobs or improved their employment status. Additional sessions of vocational training for NEO vulnerable beneficiaries in trades such as apparel-making, hair dressing, cooking and construction works are scheduled for early 2013.

Today, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with partners Qtel Group and AusAID, announced the winners of the GSMA mWomen Design Challenge, which aims to redefine the smartphone user experience for resource-poor women in emerging markets.

The GSMA mWomen Design Challenge was created to simplify the smartphone user interface to help overcome reading and technical literacy barriers for women. Twenty-two per cent of women surveyed in Egypt, India, Papua New Guinea and Uganda who do not use mobile phones say it is because they do not know how to use them. Watch this video with women mobile phone users in Indonesia review the winning submissions to the GSMA mWomen Design Challenge.

Effective knowledge management is crucial to achieving USAID’s mission of ending world poverty. Groups internal and external to the agency have been working on individual Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives to improve their processes and capture the impact their work is having on international development. The Knowledge Management Expo, hosted by USAID’s Knowledge Services Center KM Team, in conjunction with the KM Reference Group, will bring these groups together to share their innovative knowledge management practices, tools and solutions, and exchange best practices, lessons learned and the challenges.

Keynote Speaker Erin Elizabeth McKee is the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL). Ms. McKee has played an integral role in PPL’s push to incorporate learning into all USAID programming by spearheading USAID’s Open Data Initiative. The Open Data Initiative was launched in response to the President’s call for a more transparent, collaborative, and participative federal government, and seeks to strengthen USAID as a platform where the world’s biggest development problems find the best development problem solvers.

The KM Center allows an exchange of ideas to provide solutions for people around the world, such as Ojok's family who was displaced from their land during a former war in Uganda. Photo credit:USAID

The KM Expo features presenters from both inside and outside the agency, reflecting the strength of knowledge management throughout the development community. Presentations topics include how to integrate knowledge management into daily work and project management, how to use social media as a learning tool, and USAID’s premiere KM initiative, the Program Cycle. Each presentation topic is specifically related to knowledge management for development and how to better use it in daily work and strategic planning. The broad range of topics within this framework reflects the importance of knowledge management in all aspects of development and ensures a rich and beneficial dialogue among attendees.

In addition to presenters, various exhibitors will be showcasing their KM initiatives during the Expo. Exhibitors including the M/CIO’s Knowledge Services Center, the State Department’s Office of eDiplomacy, USAID’s GeoCenter, Economic Analysis and Data Services, and USAID’s Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems (ASSIST) project, among others, will have the opportunity to share what they have been working on as well as contribute to others’ projects.

The KM Expo will bring knowledge management and the development community together to share projects, ideas, challenges and inspiration, enabling USAID and its partners to become stronger, more agile and better able to achieve the ultimate goal of ending world poverty.

Can’t attend the Expo? No problem. Follow along on Twitter at #KMExpo.